Since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast last Monday, Americans have had a new way to spell failure: Fema. It stands for Federal Emergency Management Agency, but the drowning of New Orleans and the devastation of the Mississippi shore is one emergency it has clearly failed to manage.

Fema appeared to have been taken by surprise by the extent of the New Orleans flood. It took four days to begin a large-scale evacua tion of people stranded in the Superdome stadium and to bring in significant amounts of food and water to an American city easily accessible by motorway.

Relief agencies took half that time to reach Indonesia after the Boxing Day tsunami. Fema has quickly become the scapegoat for what some American politicians are conceding is a 'national disgrace'.

Fema's director, Michael Brown, has done the rounds of television talk shows, where he has been duly savaged. He admitted that he had no idea before Thursday that there was anyone - let alone 20,000 desperate people - waiting to be evacuated by rescue teams from the New Orleans Convention Centre, whereupon the ABC newscaster Ted Koppel asked him incredulously: 'Don't you guys watch television? Don't you guys listen to the radio? Our reporters have been reporting it for more than just today.'

Most experts agree that the agency's failure also reflects bureaucratic sclerosis in Washington and a disproportionate emphasis on terrorism.

Fema was established by President Jimmy Carter after criticism of the incoherent federal response to earlier natural disasters. Over the following two decades, it earned the reputation as an agile and effective organisation.

All that appears to have changed after the 9/11 attacks. Fema was absorbed into the mammoth Department of Homeland Security, in the expectation that its expertise would be vital in the wake of another devastating attack.

The result, however, was that Fema became part of the counter-terrorism apparatus and its preparedness for natural disaster atrophied. When the Louisiana state authorities appealed for medical aid from Fema, the first delivery they received was a shipment of drugs and equipment for use in the event of a chemical weapon attack.

Some Republican politicians are now calling for Fema to be extricated from the homeland security morass. Summing up a growing mood in the party, Congressman Mark Foley declared: 'Fema should not be hindered by a top-heavy bureaucracy when it is needed to act swiftly to save lives.'

Brown himself has minimal experience of managing emergencies. In the Seventies, he oversaw the emergency services of Edmund, a town in Oklahoma. For the 10 years before he came to Fema, he was a lawyer for the business interests of a wealthy family in Colorado. He was also the head of the International Arabian Horse Association.

However, he was an old friend of Joseph Allbaugh, who ran George W Bush's election campaign in 2001 and went on to run Fema, bringing in Brown as his deputy. When Allbaugh left in 2003 to join a private company that is winning contracts in Iraq, Brown took over. He may yet be sorry he did.